Digital Justice:

LeRon L. Barton is a writer and speaker from Kansas City, Missouri, currently living in San Diego, California. A graduate of Paseo Academy of Fine Arts, Barton is the author of Straight Dope: A 360 Degree Look into American Drug Culture and All We Really Need Is Love: Stories of Dating, Relationships, Heartbreak, and Marriage. In addition to his books, Barton is an essayist whose work explores racism, mass incarceration, politics, gender, and dating. His writing has appeared in Black Enterprise, Newsweek, Salon, Harvard Business Review, The Good Men Project, Your Tango, Media Diversity, Raconteur, Elephant Journal, Slate, and MoAD.

Barton is an international speaker who has given talks at TEDx, Al Jazeera, Oxford University, the University of San Francisco, Navis, Speakers Who Dare, University of Massachusetts Amherst, NAS Dubai, Glide Memorial Church, HCA, the City of Cupertino, Los Altos Chamber of Commerce, Square, Lockton, United Way of Los Angeles, and Defy Ventures. In his spare time, Barton enjoys mentoring African American youth and backpacking around the world.

Eric Gentry is a social worker who provides clinical support, mental health counseling, and reentry services to help individuals overcome barriers, reintegrate into their communities, and challenge stigma. He promotes education as a key pathway to successful reentry.

Ms. Brittany White is an organizer, strategist, and trainer, she centers her work on ensuring that women and their unique experiences in the American penal system are not erased from conversations or solutions related to poverty, gun violence and mass incarceration. Ms. White believes that cultivating a life of dignity for those most marginalized in our society is the key ingredient to developing system-impacted leadership. This is accomplished by shifting people from shame to solution and is a process best led by those who have maneuvered through their own journeys with incarceration, poverty and gun violence. Brittany served five years within the Alabama Department of Corrections from 2009-2014. During the course of her incarceration, she developed a strong desire to address the corruption and despair she witnessed on a day-to-day basis and, once released, and with the help of her church, found her purpose and a platform to articulate and act upon her experience. Subsequently, she went from being a volunteer faith leader, to a professional organizer. She is a 2021 Galaxy Leader Fellow Ms. White spent 2022-2023  as the Visiting Practitioner in Residence as a joint fellow between Harvard Law School’s Institute to End Mass Incarceration and Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship. She is currently the principal at the Shelley & Felton White Institute. This institute works with individuals impacted by structural poverty, who they refer to as “system survivors”. The goal of the institute is for  impacted individuals to learn how to build durable power in the public arena using a culturally accessible curriculum, apprenticeship under experienced practitioners, then go on to be a part of impactful campaigns.